By China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association – Lithium Branch (CNIA-Li)
Since new energy industry was the key support orientation in the “Made in China 2025”National Strategy and during the 13th-Five-Year Plan period, China plans to accumulatively manufacture and sell 5 million new energy automobiles by 2020. The world’s major automobile producers also put forward the development program of the electric car, according to which the global production of new energy automobiles is estimated to total more than 13 million units by 2020.
In recent years, China’s new energy industry experienced an explosive development due to the continued policy support and rising demand in China, and China’s lithium industry maintained high growth momentum. There was strong demand in China’s lithium carbonate market; with the lithium price soaring and tight supply.
Despite abundant lithium resources, large-scale production of lithium has not been developed in China, restricted by many conditions, and China mainly imported lithium from South America and Australia, etc; leaving domestic lithium battery and new energy automotive technology lagging far behind developed countries such as Japan and South Korea.
If there is no improvement in the domestic situation, with scientific research institutions isolated from production enterprises, and lack of technological innovation ability, lithium resources and technology may be dominated by a few large foreign companies, following the same old disastrous road of iron ore and sylvite several years ago.
As a global lithium resource-rich country, how to effectively develop and utilize lithium resources in China? And as a main producer of automobiles, how to make progress in the field of new energy vehicles? Under this background, and to implement the “innovation-driven development” strategy by the Central Government, the 2017 International Lithium Conference will be held, co-hosted by Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) and China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association (CNIA) on March 14-16, 2017.
The conference will invite officials from government sectors, experts and scholars of leading enterprises at home and abroad, and scientific research institutions to set up a communication platform of the lithium industry, promote the combination of production, study and research, combination of national policy and enterprise appeal, and a combination of upstream, middle stream and downstream sectors within the lithium industry chain, and discuss the technology development trend of the lithium industry.
